Knowing God

by J.I. Packer

he who does not love Christians is evidently not in the family, for “God is love” and imparts a loving nature to all who know him

2. Propitiation was made by the death of Jesus Christ.

what quenched God’s wrath and so redeemed us from death was not Jesus’ life or teaching, not his moral perfection nor his fidelity to the Father, as such, but the shedding of his blood in death.

Paul

explains the atonement in terms of representative substitution—th...

place of the guilty, in the name and for the sake of the guilty, under the axe of Go...

Representative substitution, as the way and means of atonement, was taught in typical form by the God-given Old Testament sacrificial system. There, the perfect animal that was to be offered for sin was first symbolically constituted a representative by the sinner’s laying his hand on its head and so identifying it with him and him with it (Lev 4:4, 24, 29, 33), and then it was killed as a substitute for the offerer, the blood being sprinkled “before the Lord” and applied to one or both of the altars in the sanctuary (Lev 4:6-7, 17-18, 25, 30) as a sign that expiation had been made, averting wrath and restoring fellowship.

This double ritual taught a single lesson: that through the sacrifice of a representative substitute God’s wrath is averted and that sins are borne away out of sight, never to trouble our relationship with God again.

3. Propitiation manifests God’s righteousness.

This “passing over” of sins in “forbearance” was not, indeed, forgiveness, but postponement of judgment only;

God, far from being unconcerned about moral issues and the just requirement of retribution for wrongdoing, is so concerned about these things that he does not—indeed, Paul would, we think, boldly say, cannot—pardon sinners, and justify the ungodly, except on the basis of justice shown forth in retribution.

Our sins have been punished; the wheel of retribution has turned; judgment has been inflicted for our ungodliness—but on Jesus, the lamb of God, standing in our place. In this way God is just—and the justifier of those who put faith in Jesus,

the salvation of those who are saved, and the damnation of those who are lost—retribution falls; punishment is inflicted; God is righteous, and justice is done.

God’s wrath is his righteousness reacting against unrighteousness; it shows itself in retributive justice.

Redeeming love and retributive justice joined hands, so to speak, at Calvary, for there God showed himself to be “just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”

We have all heard the gospel presented as God’s triumphant answer to human problems—problems of our relation with ourselves and our fellow humans and our environment. Well, there is no doubt that the gospel does bring us solutions to these problems, but it does so by first solving a deeper problem—the deepest of all human problems, the problem of man’s relation with his Maker.

a half-truth presented as if it were the whole truth becomes something

of a falsehood by that very fact.

when you are on top of the truth of propitiation, you can see the entire Bible in perspective,

Your basic impression will be of a man of action:

Your further impression will be of a man who knew himself to be a divine person

Your final impression will be of One for whom this experience of death was the most fearful ordeal.

how should we explain the fact that, whereas martyrs like Stephen faced death with joy, and even Socrates, the pagan philosopher, drank his hemlock and died without a tremor, Jesus, the perfect servant of

God, who had never before showed the least fear of man or pain or loss, manifested in Gethsemane what looked like blue funk, and on the cross declared himself God-forsaken? “Never man feared death like this man,” commented Luther. Why? What did it mean?

“that these experiences of deadly fear and of desertion are of one piece with the fact that in his death and in the agony of the garden through which he accepted that death as the cup which his Father gave him to drink, Jesus was taking upon him the burden of the world’s sin, consenting to be, and actually being, numbered with the transgressors?”

the unique dreadfulness of his death lies in the fact that he tasted on Calvary the wrath of God which was

our due, so making propitiation for our sins.

O Christ, what burdens bowed Thy head!

Our load was laid on Thee; Thou stoodest in the sinner’s stead, Didst bear all ill for me. A victim led, Thy blood was shed; Now there’s no load for me. The Holy One did hide His face; O Christ, ’twas hid from Thee: Dumb darkness wrapped Thy soul a space, The darkness due to me. But now that face of radiant grace Shines forth in light on me.

Decisions made in this life will have

eternal consequences.

Look at the cross, therefore, and you see what form God’s judicial reaction to human sin will finally take.

Calvary shows that under the final judgment of God nothing that one has valued, or could value, nothing that one can call good, remains

Think, third, of God’s gift of peace.

God’s peace brings us two things: power to face and to live with our own

badness and failings, and also contentment under “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”

The truth which this account ignores is that the basic ingredient in God’s peace, without which the rest cannot be, is pardo...

The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God;

it is the state of affairs in which God, instead of being against us, is for us.

Think, lastly, of the meaning of God’s glory.

Bearing shame and scoffing rude In my place condemned He stood; Sealed my pardon with His blood: Hallelujah! What a Saviour! . . . ***

He left His Father’s throne above, So free, so infinite His grace; Emptied Himself of all but love And bled for Adam’s helpless race. Amazing love! How can it be? For O, my God, it found out me! . .

What is a Christian?

The question can be answered in many ways,

the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who ...

cannot this be said of every person, Christian or not? Emphatically no! The idea that all are children of God is ...

The New Testament has a world vision, but it too shows God as the Father, not of all, but of those who, knowing themselves

to be sinners, put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as their divine sin-bearer and master,

Sonship to God is not, therefore, a universal status into which everyone enters by natural birth, but a supernatural gift which one receives through receiving Jesus.

The gift of sonship to God becomes ours not through being born, but through being born again.